All Forum Posts by: Jonathan Forbes

Hey Jesse,

Really appreciate your comment. 

I would love to connect and discuss things further.

Chat soon!

Hey Marian,

I appreciate you taking the time to read my post and asking a great question.

I’ll try to keep my response short but I may struggle as I am very passionate about this topic.

There are several reasons why we decided to be 100% independent over partnering with eXp, but here are the main 3:

1. 100% ownership 

Probably the most important reason being the financial benefits of being independent and owning the company.

eXp did it best with their model of being one brokerage per State and claiming all the revenue, opposed to competitors like ReMax who can only earn Franchise Fees and Royalties based on their model (also shows the difference in valuation despite agent count).

That being said, cloud brokerages clearly have the advantage of earning a very high valuation relative to Franchises based brokerages. Look at the Real Broker, they haven’t been around for very long and have a very small fraction of the agents that eXp have, yet they have a $400M + market cap (only $100M short of ReMax). 

Based on this logic, my brokerage had a higher chance to 10x or even 100x on valuation opposed to eXp (what are the chances my company goes from $10M to $100M or $1B compared to eXp going from $2B to $20B+).

We also keep all the revenue generated. Most owners will agree the hardest part of being a brokerage owner is recruiting / keeping agents. Doesn’t make sense for us to recruit the agents, give up revenue share, deal with silly down lines and gain a portion of the benefit from the stock rising due to our hard work.

Yes, costs are high, It’s a lot of work and there’s much more risk / liability involved, but the reward outweighs it all.

2. HUGE Opportunity  

eXp Realty is arguably the most successful Brokerage to date when it comes to innovation and valuation but there’s always room for growth.

A lot of Realtors love the cloud brokerage model but don’t like eXp and the Real Broker. Nonetheless, a lot of these people end up joining them because they don’t have many options. Within the states there are 100,000+ independent brokerages and within recent years we’re seeing more follow the cloud brokerage model. Why? Because there’s a MASSIVE opportunity out there that’s up for grabs. eXp doesn’t own a monopoly, they’re just one of the firsts to do it, and within the next 10 Years i guarantee they’ll face fierce competition.

We wanted to take advantage of this opportunity. Take advantage of the model but rebrand what it means to be a cloud brokerage. Compete with the juggernauts and take a piece of the market share, which was successful. Realtors love that this was “the next big thing” and that they had the opportunity to get in at the ground floor and earn that equity before the company could take off. 

Additionally, their “tech” isn’t as advanced as you may think. Compared to other brokerages? Absolutely. But compared to where modern technology is as a whole, they are ages behind. There is A LOT of room for innovation within the industry, we took advantage of this and introduced tech that came at a surprise to many Realtors. 

3. Freedom & Control 

Lastly, we don’t want to be at anyone’s mercy for anything. We wanted 100% control over what we offered, how to brand ourselves, pretty much anything.

It’s really hard to innovate and offer added value as a Brokerage Owner if you’re under the umbrella of another brokerage.

I hope this answered your question and you can get a better idea of where my mindset was at.

Would love to connect and discuss this topic further!

Life can be very unpredictable.

Something I could have never predicted was becoming a brokerage owner at an early start in my real estate career.

Being thrown into an unfamiliar industry, I was entrusted with managing brokerages in 3 different States and 1 Province. I built the structure and scaled these cloud brokerages starting from zero.

But of course, I wasn't alone. I had a fellow business partner who was the driving force and leader in executing this new venture.

We started out owning a Brokerage in Ontario, Canada our home Province and Country. We were able to collect referrals from our lead generation services that we did on the side. At the time we didn't prioritize Real Estate, but understood the Marketing systems and took advantage. Up until our venture was paused due to Covid, we then switched our focus completely on Real Estate.

We took everyone's feedback and expanded Operations into the United States, starting in Florida and Nevada, then Texas shortly after. Being that we had a small team based in Canada, we ensured all our operations were cost efficient and of most importantly, cloud based. This marked the start of our journey of being a North American-wide cloud-based brokerage.

This was not an easy task to execute. There was a lot of work in front of us and I took on the responsibilities for our internal procedures and workflows. This included our agent recruitment process, onboarding, cloud-based technology, online environment & culture, and our lead generation tactics, which I already had experience in.

This was A LOT to take on, especially with no experience, resources or tools out there to help. What was most shocking however, was the lack of resources available to help Real Estate Professionals with launching their own Brokerage and expanding their Realty Business.

Nonetheless, after trial and error I figured it out and was successful in building, implementing and managing these tasks. We surpassed our goals, rapidly recruiting in all our markets generating a consistent flow of agents. Additionally, I was able to hire and delegate some of my work to experts who were even better than me, building a team I couldn't be more proud of.

Our hard work took us to heights we never imagined, like reaching 100 agents in 5 months!

After seeing success at a small scale, we were ready to expand operations across the States, replicating the process I've built everywhere. However, life showed me once again how unpredictable it can be. Due to unforeseen internal issues with shareholders, the focus and funding towards scaling was halted. This resulted in my team and I losing out on the opportunity to scale the company to compete with eXp Realty as the number one cloud brokerage.

Additionally, this decision resulted in there being drastic layoffs, causing the team I built to be let go.

Given the relationships I've built and loving the work we did together, I decided to step away from my position within the Brokerages and keep my team together to pursue a new venture.

That's what brings me where I am today. Choosing my team over stability, I've decided to support Brokerages, Agents and Teams across North America.

We'll be taking our expertise, experience and tech to help other Brokerages, Agents and Teams. Whether it's with recruiting, implementing innovative tech, lead generation or building / optimizing a workflow structure, we'll be there.

This is something I wish I had access to when getting started and I believe is essential to have within the Real Estate Industry.

With it only being 2 months since we started, I'm blessed to say we've already had 4 clients sign on, officially starting my new chapter has officially begun!

Stay open minded, go with your gut and always give it your all!